Twilight's Monster
by Fuzzyfurvert
Summary: In an Equestria without the Princesses or the guidance of the Elements of Harmony, Twilight Sparkle is a researcher on the cusp of her greatest discovery and simultaneous fall from grace while finding love at the same time.


**Twilight's Monster**

_by Fuzzyfurvert_

"I love you!" Luna yelled as she was dragged away by a group of security ponies.

Twilight reached blindly in the direction she heard Luna shout from. Hooves on her shoulders and around her waist kept her from going far and she could feel the press of magic crushing her into the wet paver stones of the roadway. She was still reeling from the gunbutt blow to her eye, and what little of the world she could see spun. She willed her magic into being and pushed back into the street, lifting herself and her assailants back up.

She planted her hooves and swung her head to the side to smash her horn into the jaw of one of the stallions. He grunted in surprised pain and let her go. She used her newly freed hoof to punch the stallion with his arms around her middle. Luck landed her wide swing where it needed to go - into the side of that pony's face, right under the brim of his helmet - and he dropped with a loud yelp.

Emboldened, Twilight twisted and lashed out at the last of the security ponies still clutching at her. She added force to the blow with her telekinesis and she felt a savage sort of joy when she heard the armor around his ribcage buckle. She didn't pause to relish her victory and turned back toward the other group of ponies on top of Luna.

Luna was not faring as well as she had. Four large stallions were riding Luna to the ground, all of their horns firing as they tried to keep her down. Simple brute strength kept Luna more or less standing as she tried to buck them off and away. Twilight roared and dived forward to tackle the nearest stallion to the ground.

"Get off her!"

Twilight reared toward the second pony when she felt a powerful tug on her mane that nearly yanked her off her hooves. She looked back to see the first stallion she'd thrown off back up and his horn glowing. He braced himself and took a step back, pulling her along with him. "Ma'am, you are resisting arrest! Power down your horn and lay on the ground with your hooves spread or I will use force."

Twilight struggled against the grip and dropped back to all fours to dig her hooves into the pavement. She looked back at Luna and lashed out with own magic to throw another of the security ponies from the mare. She felt more telekinesis grip at her rear legs and she fought the urge to side step and throw herself off balance. Twilight held her place and slammed the pony she'd pulled off Luna into the ground muzzle first. There was a wet crunch and when she let go there was blood on his face as he rolled over with a pathetic groan.

"Ok, that's it! Gas them!"

Twilight grimaced and looked up as another half dozen armored security guards moved in from a side alley and lobbed smoking canisters into the fray. She gulped down a quick lungful of air as the security ponies all engaged respirators built into their black ceramic armor, and she spun as another of the downed guards rose and tried to tackle her again. He missed by a hair and she used the momentum to rip a paver stone out of the street and fling it at the stallion holding her mane.

He ducked, breaking his hold on Twilight's mane and she jumped toward Luna again. Luna, meanwhile, had tossed her last two assailants to the street and was rearing back to ram her hooves into one of them. Another telekinetic tug on her wings brought the mare to the ground and knocked the wind from her lungs. Twilight reached her a moment later and helped Luna back up. By the time Luna was standing again, the smoke was starting to obscure their vision and Twilight was running out of breath.

Telekinetic force from almost ten ponies hit them a second later. Twilight felt her legs being pulled in four directions at once and another force on her back pushing her down. She gripped at the paver stones and pushed back, but after a moment she collapsed and let out what little oxygen she had left in a long expulsion of breath. Luna collapsed beside her with a bone crunching thud a moment later.

Twilight sucked in air and smoke and started to cough immediately. "Lu-luna, don't...don't breathe the smo-ack!-smoke!"

Luna groaned and and slumped toward Twilight and reached a wing out and over her. "Twi..light? It...it will be…"

Twilight coughed as her vision deteriorated further and she could feel herself slipping into unconsciousness. She expected to be dog-piled by the security ponies but they stayed back and let the gas do its work. Luna mumbled something more but she couldn't understand what it was.

The last thing she saw before the darkness fully set in was Luna's teal eyes locked on her own.

* * *

Twilight came to in an uncomfortable position, slumped in a hard metal chair. It felt like the swelling around her left eye had already started to recede and she opened it gently. Her metallic chair had a matching metallic table between it and its empty twin. The furniture was the only furnishing in the tiny room she could make out.

Twilight groaned as she looked around. She could feel the weight of a suppression ring around her horn and a shackle around her leg. Everything was sore and she had no idea what time it was, but she was pretty certain she knew where she was.

"So when am I going to meet my interrogator?" Her voice sounded more than a little ragged. Now that she'd spoken, Twilight could feel how dry her throat was.

Twilight had just started to formulate a way out of the suppressor when the room's single door opened. She eased herself into as dignified a pose as she could manage and glowered at the pony coming through until she saw who it was. Shining Armor, Security Chief of the Solar Council, stepped into the room wearing his navy blue state uniform and levitating a pitcher and a stack of paper cups with him.

"Shining?" Twilight croaked. "Isn't detainee interrogation a little beneath your paygrade?"

Twilight's older brother kept his face neutral as he set the cups and pitcher on the table. He took a seat in the chair opposite Twilight's and then allowed himself to frown. "Twily...I'd never imagined, when I took this job, that one day I would have my own sister in cuffs on the other side of this table."

Shining sighed and tipped the pitcher over and poured two cups full of clear water. Twilight locked her eyes on the liquid for a moment and then glared back at her brother. "Really? You are really using a basic tactic like this on me? You let detainees get thirsty so that when you bring the water in it makes them feel grateful." Twilight sneered. "What was it that you told me a few years ago? 'Grateful ponies were far more forthcoming in your experience.'"

Shining levitated one of the cups to the far side of the table where Twilight could lift it with her hooves and then levitated his own to himself. "If I'd known you were who the Council was looking for, I would have told the boys to go easier on you. And water would have been provided, Twily, trust me. I might be head of security around here, but I'm still your big brother. I'll have a nurse in here to look at your eye shortly."

"Don't."

"Excuse me?" Shining raised an eyebrow.

"Don't bother with a nurse, Shining. I'm a big girl now." Twilight lifted her cup carefully and tipped its full contents into her mouth and down her burning throat. "Thank you for the thought, though."

"Twily, you don't have to act like a tough mare with me. Just tell me what happened and we'll get this misunderstanding cleared up and put it behind us."

Twilight stared at her hooves and turned her paper cup between them. She didn't answer him and he could feel his stomach start to bunch tighter.

"Twily, c'mon, it's me Shining. You can tell your BBBFF anything. Clearly there has been a mistake made somewhere or we wouldn't be here. Tell me how you got caught up in all this and we can be home in time for dinner. Dad told me earlier that Mom is making her spicy eggplant parmesan tonight. How long has it been since we ate together as a family?"

"It has been a long time, huh?" Twilight shrugged noncommittally and then looked up at Shining with the sort of eyes he'd seen far too often as security chief. "But do you believe that, Shining?" Twilight set her empty cup back on the table. "Really? That this is all some sort of misunderstanding?"

Shining let himself smirk as if nothing could be further from his mind. "Of course it is! Are you telling me it isn't? That you, of all ponies, the young wunderkind of the Solar Council - and my sister - has committed blasphemy? I simply can't believe that, Twily." Shining Armor refreshed her cup. "All these charges? I mean - no offense - I always suspected the fillyfooling with you...but with some sort of mutant animal? C'mon!"

"She's not an animal!"

Shining stared at his sister for a long moment in silence. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter and had a hard edge to it. "Then what is it? It had feathers. Feathers, Twilight. Explain it to me. Explain to me how you got involved with this thing. Explain to me why I have a file on my desk that claims you demolished Council property and assaulted several Equestrian citizens as well as resisted arrest."

Twilight blinked a few times and reached down to lift her cup again. She looked down into its shallow depth and her voice grew thick. "Her name is Luna. It's a beautiful name."

"Luna?" Shining frowned at that. The creature having a name wasn't in his reports. Adding new information would damn Twilight as much as a full admission of guilt. "That's an odd name. Did you pick it, or did somepony else?"

Twilight kept her eyes on her cup but she wasn't looking at what was in her hooves. She thought about those teal eyes and that soft, lovely smile. She thought of the way Luna's magic lapped against her own like the ocean laps against the shore. "It was her name. She told me."

Shining pulled a small flip-pad of paper and pen from his breast pocket, his posture as stiff as when Twilight had seen him speak before the Council. "So this thing can actually talk? The Council is going to have a field day with it."

"She can do a hell of a lot more than just talk! Luna is the most wonderful pony I've ever known."

Shining shifted in his seat uncomfortably and took a swig of his drink. "Tell me about this 'Luna', Twilight. Help me understand."

"Well…"

* * *

"Doctor Sparkle?"

"Yes?" She looked up from the textbook in front of her. One of the lab assistants from Medical on the fourth floor stood in the doorway.

"You left instructions to be alerted as soon as the test results were back." The mare shifted uncomfortably.

The assistants tended to do that when she glared at them in silence for too long. She blinked and forced her face to soften. She'd been down in the basement archives for too long again. She must look like a ghoul hunched over a fresh kill, the way she was hunched over the desk that held the books she'd used for research. "And they're ready?"

"Uh...yes, ma'am." The mare took a step back and spared a look back down the hall to the elevator. "We've sent them to your office, if you'd like to look over them."

She waved the mare off and looked back at the textbook again. The words swam before her eyes and she groaned quietly. She'd been reading in the archive for two days straight and she was beginning to smell. There wasn't a mirror amid the cramped shelves and filing cabinets but she was sure her mane looked horrible.

"Perhaps it's time to take a break." She flipped the book closed and tossed it on top of the stack of journals to her right and rose to her hooves unsteadily. She turned to follow the path the assistant had fled down, shaking the stiffness out of her joints with each step. The elevator beeped as soon as it returned and she was glad to see the car empty. She stepped inside and reached out to tap the button for her penthouse office but her hoof hesitated. The specimen should be in the twelfth floor Thaumatronics lab at the moment, if her memory served.

She hit the button for twelve.

When the elevator beeped again, the doors opened to the long hall that led to the twelfth floor lab proper. She nodded to the security pony at the checkpoint desk and trotted briskly past the windows that overlooked the Neigh York skyline as it twinkled in the fading light of dusk. The glass door slid open as she approached and once inside she slowed to a halt.

In the main theater room, the specimen rested on its back on two hastily pressed together operating tables. Wires and cabling strung over the theater hung from above and two techs were steadily connecting them to leads that the Medical team had already inserted. Given the unique situation, they had moved the horn thaumatic sensor into the theater as well and were just slipping the first rings on when her presence was noticed.

"Doctor Sparkle, can I help you?" Short Circuit, the Thaumatronics team lead, walked up to her with a clipboard in his telekinetic grip. "We're just about to get started on the battery of tests you ordered. Did you come to oversee things?"

"No." She assured him with what she hoped looked like a friendly smile. "I was just on my way to the office and I wanted to see her before I did."

"'Her?'" Short Circuit raised an eyebrow.

She gestured at the unconscious specimen with a hoof. "It. This thing we have here. It's fascinating."

"Fascinating? More like disturbing." Short Circuit shuddered and looked at his clipboard as the techs completed their connections and started the equipment tests. "I've never seen an animal with a magically capable horn before. Cut off those wings and this thing could almost pass for a pony. That's downright scary when you think about it."

"Perhaps."

"And when you factor in the slowed breathing and heart rate and where it was recovered from…" Short Circuit faded off as the techs waved an all clear before stepping out of the operating theater. "Well, if you'll excuse me Doctor, I have some tests to see to."

She nodded absently, her eyes watching the creature on the tables as it continued to slumber and pay their actions no mind. She traced the lines of its graceful neck down to the powerful shoulders and then over those strangely beautiful, alien wings. The creature, whatever it was, was glorious and it made her mind reel at the implications its very existence represented. She watched the techs get started for a moment and then returned to the elevator and then finally to her office on the penthouse level.

Her office took up the entire level, technically. Half of it, however, was dedicated to her personal living space and had been since she'd been named Director of New Magical Development by the Solar Council several years ago. Just as she'd been told, a stack of printouts with the test results from Medical sat on her official desk. She snagged them with her telekinesis as she passed and continued into her apartment area. She really did need a shower and food. Probably a nap too. She couldn't shake the vision of the creature out of her head and she was starting to wonder just how soft those feathers actually were.

She tossed the paperwork on her bed and paused a moment to shake some gem flakes into her pet lizard, Spike's, enclosured tank before trotting into her shower. The water cleared her mind and soothed her body as she stood in the stall and let her mane and coat soak in the heat and moisture. She stayed in until she felt her hooves starting to prune and shut off the water. Dinner was a packet of instant noodles again and the last of the stale cupcakes in her fridge.

Once she was satisfactorily fed and groomed, she let herself crash into her bed. Sleep did not take her immediately, so she rolled over and pulled the medical results up over her face to start reading. She hummed tunelessly to herself as she scanned the basic findings.

"Spike?" She dropped the papers onto her chest and looked over at his tank. "If I didn't know better, I'd say I was reading stats on a particularly tall supermodel. Other than the wings and the fact that all her biological processes are moving in slow motion, this says she's otherwise in perfect health! There isn't any cellular damage at all...just imagine what this could mean. If we could unlock a way to successfully stop or otherwise slow down cellular degradation, we could effectively stop or even reverse aging!"

Spike pulled a gem flake into his mouth with his tongue and made the rumbling trill noise that usually signaled his pleasure.

"I know, right?" She sighed and looked out the windows into the darkening night. The first few stars of the evening were just starting to appear in the sky. "I hope Short Circuit's team sheds more light on this mystery, Spike. There is something very profound here...I can feel it."

Spike said nothing and Twilight watched as more lights in the skyline winked on.

She awoke with a jolt and gasped as the paperwork slipped off her chest and onto the floor beside her bed. The room was dark and silent, her lights having auto-turned off at some point. The only light was from the full moon as it peeked over the horizon. Something didn't feel right. She had been dreaming, hadn't she? She couldn't remember.

She shook her head to clear the fog and sat up. She still didn't feel right. She felt a pressure behind her temple but her head didn't ache. It felt like something was leaning against her from every direction at once and it was getting heavier with each passing second. She had just started to reach for the lights when the buzzing from her intercom started and she reached out and tapped that instead.

"Yes?"

"Doctor Sparkle!" Short Circuit's voice blared from the small speaker. "I'm sorry to wake you, but you need to come down to twelve now!"

"What's wrong?" She pushed away the papers and got to her hooves. She could hear the sounds of multiple voices shouting in the background. "What's going on down there, Circuit?"

"That damn abomination woke up!"

She was flying toward the door as fast as her hooves could carry her, her magic pressing the call button for the lift before she was even out of her apartment. The ride down the eight intervening floors was excruciatingly slow. As soon as the doors started to open she squeezed through the crack and was off like a shot into the Thaumatronics lab.

She didn't know what to expect, but she certainly wasn't expecting to see a half dozen technicians and one security pony trying to forcibly hold down the specimen as it kicked and bucked and screamed. She skidded to a halt just outside the theater and gasped as she saw beads of silvery light begin to form at the tip of the creature's horn and along the edges of its largest primary feathers. The pressure she'd felt since waking up suddenly receded as the light intensified and its horn and wings started to glow from the inside.

Time seemed to slow as she watched this being open its eyes and for a moment they met hers. She could see the confusion, the panic in them. She could see the intelligence behind them. There was a pony behind those eyes and she was terrified. The glow got steadily brighter and started to consume the mare from the outside in. She remember the brief flash of that second creature she had seen and jolted into action.

"You!" She barked at the security pony. "Close the window blinds, now! The rest of you, stop holding her down and get her away from the windows and moonlight!"

The techs jumped at her shout but they started to obey while the stallion on security galloped for the windows with his horn blazing. She grabbed another of the operating tables in her telekinesis and lifted it up to block the thrashing mare's line of sight to the rising moon and moved along as the techs hauled the mare deeper into the lab's back rooms and supply areas.

She heard the blinds snapping shut behind her, felt that pressure return and crash down on her. It almost felt like she was being dragged underwater by some invisible anchor. The glow from the mare's horn and wings faded once they managed to get her into one of the back rooms that housed the servers. She floated the table up to the door to block it until they were all inside and then yanked the door closed.

With the view of the moon completely blocked, the glowing and thrashing came to a stop. The techs stepped back and away from the mare that was now wide awake and shivering on the floor between them. Those teal eyes darted around the small room, landing on each of them before settling on her. The mare pulled her wings in and flinched at the discomfort the leads and stents caused her. Her mouth opened and the mare made a noise. It sounded like a word but it was in no language she was familiar with. The other ponies reacted immediately and jumped back with gasps and shouts. She heard plenty of things she was far more familiar with.

"It talks?!"

"This is unnatural! What does the Council think it has us here doing?"

"Blessed Elders Who Art Among the Stars, Your kingdom come and will be done, lead us not into temptation…"

"Shut up! All of you!" She stamped her hooves for emphasis. "Are you not scientists? Get your tools and notebooks and get back in here ASAP, we need to record everything she says and does. This is the find of a lifetime!"

The techs looked back at her mutely. Slowly, one by one, they began to shake their heads.

"What?"

"I-I am sorry, Doctor Sparkle, I respect you, but I'm not going to touch that thing again. It's not one of us." The tech swallowed and glanced back at the mare that was still shivering on the floor with her hooves tucked under herself. "It's a talking animal abomination before the gods and elders, and the Council is going to want to destroy it and anypony that gets near it."

"Ridiculous." She looked at the collected ponies filling the server room with her. "You can't all possibly believe that? The Solar Council doesn't work like that!"

"Maybe not for you. But regular ponies like us? We're dead meat."

"Let me out of here!"

As soon as the call went out the techs gelled into a herd and they all rushed the door at once. She grabbed the table again and blocked the mare's view of the moon as the stampede of ponies squeezed its way out. In no time at all she found herself alone with this dark colored mystery creature. The mare on the floor continued to shiver, her eyes darting about with every sound the servers made and her ears flicked back and forth constantly as she took in her surroundings.

She was again struck by the thought that if the mare's wings were ignored, she could not only pass as a pony but as a gorgeous one at that. That lovely mare stared at her and said something.

"I don't understand you." She leaned forward slightly. "You are speaking, aren't you? It sounds like a word, not just some random noise an animal makes."

The mare made the same sound and it sounded even more like a word. She turned the sound over in her mind, trying to find some similarity with any linguistic pattern she knew. She needed to write down. She needed to be taking notes.

"Crap! I don't have anything to write with!" She grimaced and reached for the door while her telekinesis lifted the forgotten operating table again to shield the view. She opened the door wide enough to stick her head out and ran face first into all the technicians and security personnel bunched together in the narrow hallway and staring back at her with a mix of dumbfounded and terrified expressions. "Um… anypony have some paper and a pen? I need to take notes."

A pen and notepad floated over to her a moment later as the crowd parted before the blocky form of Short Circuit. The stallion did not look happy. "You can take these, and you can take that thing out of my server room and out of my lab, Doctor Sparkle."

"What?"

"You heard me! Take that Council-damned monster out of my lab! I don't care where it goes, but it does not stay here. I will not let it defile my equipment or put my staff at danger! I don't care if you are the Director or the Council's number one pawn, you will take it from here and not bring it back!" Short Circuit stamped for emphasis and then turned around, the notepad and pen dropping to the ground as he released them.

"I'll see what data we can salvage from the tests, assuming that evil in there doesn't melt the server blades."

She blinked at Short Circuit's back as he trotted off and started ordering his staff to pick up the mess left in the wake of their departure. She opened her mouth to say something but she couldn't think of anything, so she pulled the pen and paper in and closed the door again.

She set the operating table back on its end and turned back to find the dark coated mare pressing herself into the farthest corner of the room away from the door. The mare shivered and shook more violently than she had a moment before and her eyes were wide with fear.

"I don't think we'll be staying here. Given Short's reaction...I don't think I could take you to any lab. Damnit!" She frowned as she thought about where she could take the mare and study her in peace. Really, there were only two choices: the basement archives or her personal offices on the penthouse level. The basement would remove the danger of the mare seeing the moon but there would be no room and she'd need to bring in equipment. The penthouse had room but had several large windows. She could cover the windows easily enough.

"I don't understand."

Her head snapped up as the mare spoke. "Wait, you speak Equestrian?"

"Given Short's reaction." The mare's shudder eased considerably and her voice took on a mimicking tone that was a very close approximation of her voice.

"What?" She blinked at the mare and then rubbed at her temple with a hoof. "I seem to be saying that a lot recently. Are you repeating things back to me?"

"Damnit!"

"Yeah...heh, that's what you're doing." She chuckled despite or, perhaps because of, the odd circumstances she found herself in. Mimicry was a hallmark of foalhood development so it was possible that she hadn't been seeing things earlier and this mare truly was a pony in mind and not just some strange chimera creature. She smirked and thought for a moment about the sound the mare had repeated earlier. "Lu...na."

The mare smiled and for a moment Twilight was struck by the thought that every smile she'd seen in her entire life up to this point was a pale shadow of the real thing suddenly in front of her. She swallowed hard and whipped the notepad and pen around to start scribbling notes. She was just opening her mouth to say it again when the door rattled with a quick series of knocks.

"Doctor Sparkle? Chief Circuit is demanding you move to another floor and security is getting antsy…"

She sighed. "Alright already. Make sure the windows are sealed! I'll honor his wishes but if I lose my...er, specimen, I'll see to it he loses more than a job!" She tried to growl out the last sentence but her heart wasn't in it.

"Lu...na?" She stepped forward slowly as she spoke. It had taken a half dozen ponies to pull the mare into the server room and now she wasn't going to have any of that help. She held out a hoof. "I wish I could make you understand me. But we have to leave. The moon won't hurt you, I promise."

The mare shrunk back from her as she moved closer, the mare's eyes searching her own. "Lu-na. Come. Lu-na, come." She moved her hoof in what she hoped was a universal gesture to follow.

The mare flattened her ears back as she got closer but the shivering stopped and the tension slowly released from the mare's withers. By the time she was directly next to the mare, those ears where pointed at her and the mare looked more curious than anything. She waved her hoof again and repeated the short word, and thankfully, the mare seemed to get the point and slowly clambered to her hooves. The mare flinched and jerked as she did so; the numerous leads that still peppered her coat rattling faintly with her movements.

"I'll see about getting those removed but I need you to come with me now. Okay?"

The mare tilted her head in its own universal sign of non-comprehension, but she followed as Twilight lead the way out of the server room and past the cowering ponies of the Thaumatronics lab and down the hall. The windows that lined the hall were closed and had the blinds shut and drapes pulled, so that the overhead lights threw everything into a blue-white hue.

The elevator beeped and when the doors slid open the mare jumped back in fright. Twilight made soothing noises like her mother used to when she was a foal and urged the mare forward again into an even tinier room than before. When the doors closed, she feared she was going to get bucked in the head as the mare was spooked again.

When the doors opened again, eight floors later, she knew just how soft those feathers felt. They were pillowy soft and they smelled faintly of the antiseptic Medical used but underneath that was an odor that she couldn't place. It made her think of home for some reason. The upward momentum of the elevator had started the mare more than anything else and instead of flailing about as she had earlier, the mare had seen fit to wrap all of her limbs around the Director and hold her tightly.

She found herself having trouble getting mad at the situation. Her magic preceded them as she half pulled and half carried the mare from the elevator and shut the blinds and curtains on all the windows in the penthouse. It took more cajoling and repeating of "Lu-na" over and over but eventually she got the mare to let go of her and started to settle down in her personal chambers.

"Now what, Spike? I got her up here, but none of these superstitious morons are going to help me with my testing."

Spike rumbled in his tank contently and drew the mare's attention. The strange pony moved cautiously up to the enclosure and peeked in on the purple and green speckled salamander. Spike, for his part, flicked his long tongue at the mare and flexed his crest frill which made the mare snort with laughter.

"Yeah, Spike, you're right." She smiled and stepped up next to the mare as she looked in on the lizard. "Screw them, I can do this without them."

Spike flicked his tongue again and she giggled. "That means he likes you. Spike never likes anypony."

The mare smiled again and giggled but flinched a moment later when one of the leads in her chest tapped against Spike's tank.

"First thing first...let's get those out of you." She gestured with her hoof and stepped toward the bathroom. "Follow me, I have a very well stocked trauma kit in here."

About ten minutes later she was staring at the mare in shock as she watched another of the small wounds from the invasive metal leads close before her eyes. The leads ran deep into the mare's muscle tissue and were used to collect data on numerous health metrics. Having them installed hurt and limited motion and, once removed, it took a pony more than a month to heal from the procedure.

The mare with the bright teal eyes and wings the color of gathering storm clouds was doing it in seconds.

"So much for the bandages...how are you doing that?" She looked at the suddenly useless gauze and antiseptic in her trauma kit and then back at the closing pin prick holes and stent channels. "You are going to win me so many patents you wonderful miracle of nature!"

The mare smiled. "So many patents!"

"You said it." She chuckled and smiled at the pony in front of her. "I'm Doctor Twilight Sparkle, by the way. I don't think I mentioned that. What's your name?"

She smirked as the mare's brows creased and she tilted that lovely head in confusion.

"Hmmm… How about I call you 'Lu-na,' ok? You kept saying it earlier." The mare - now Lu-na - smiled at that.

"Lu-na, it is then." She started to smile back at Lu-na when she suddenly felt the need to yawn. It made her jaw pop and once it was done the full weariness of multiple days of study and reading and an interruption to her sleep barely an hour earlier crashed down on her.

Lu-na raised an eyebrow at her and then stood up from where they were both seated on the bathroom floor with the useless trauma kit. Lu-na gestured with her hoof the same way she had done when leading Lu-na around the building. Then Lu-na pointed at her bed.

"What?" She yawned again and shook her head. "No, I don't need bed. I need coffee."

She stood and wobbled slightly. "Yeah...coffee." Lu-na didn't seem to buy it and draped one of her wings over her companion's back. Lu-na's grip was firm but soft as she steered them toward the bed. By the time they reached it, she was surprised that it looked more inviting than a cup of coffee.

Lu-na said something long and musical sounding, as if she were reciting a poem or rhyme.

"What?"

Lu-na fixed her with a soothing look and leaned in to nuzzle her cheek in much the same way her mother had during much of her foalhood. She found herself sinking into the bed without so much as a fight. Lu-na pulled a sheet over her and said something else in that musical sounding language of hers.

"I wish I could understand you." She yawned again and thought she heard Lu-na respond but couldn't be sure as sleep took her with a fierceness. Her dreams were disjointed and made less sense than usual. She saw scenes of her foalhood, her time in school and her early work for the Solar Council as a special investigator all jumbled up and mixed as she seemed to wander from one to another.

"This world is so far gone. Can it be…"

She groaned as consciousness started to return.

"...have hope in this one, Sister, she has the…"

Somepony was talking and she wanted just a few more minutes alone with the pillow.

"...see a way to reach harmony but at great risk to…"

She opened her eyes and turned over to see Lu-na sitting at and staring out the window by her bed, the draped open and the blinds opened to reveal the dawn coming over the city skyline.

"We will be together soon."

"How...how are you talking?" She rubbed her eyes and blinked at Lu-na. "You were just repeating me last night!"

She threw off the sheet that covered her and started to slip off the bed when she noticed books on the floor. Books and loose folders littered the floor thick enough to obscure the carpeting. It stretched from the edge of her bed to Spike's tank and even into her tiny nook of a kitchen. Her entire personal library lay strewn across the floor with the only blank spot occupied by Lu-na.

"I read your books and files. I'm sorry that I woke you up. I intended to have them all put away before you did." Lu-na smiled at her.

"Huh?!" She blinked at the dark colored mare and then just stared at her as if she'd sprouted an extra set of wings. "I repeat: huh?"

She felt that pressure on her horn from the previous day again as Lu-na's horn flared. She gaped as every book and folder and loose page leapt into the air and then zoomed back to its home on her shelves and tabletops and counters.

"Oh, excuse me, Doctor Sparkle, but your book on organic chemistry was misfiled by two spaces. Would you like me to put it back there, or in it's correct place?"

She stumbled out of bed and hit the floor with a painful thud. She groaned and looked up at the alien beauty that regarded her calmly. "The talking."

"Yes?"

"How, Lu-na?"

"My apologies for not asking permission but as you understand, our communication last night was quite limited. I viewed your dreams and learned the basics of your language. Then I read everything you had to fill in the blanks." The mare chuckled. "I was trying to tell you before you passed out that you were mispronouncing my name. It's Luna, no pronounced pause."

She swallowed and pushed herself to her hooves. "Um...sorry."

"Think nothing of it, Doctor Sparkle. Tell me, how is my diction?"

"Very good, honestly." She looked into those lovely eyes and felt her chest tighten. Her breath grew short and she was certain she had started to blush under Lu-na...Luna's gaze.

Luna giggled and she could see a slight blush develop under the other mare's coat. "Oh good. Now that we can speak with each other properly, there is something we must see to."

She opened her mouth to speak but she couldn't find any words as her eyes locked on Luna's.

"In times of old, before I was sealed away, it was customary for the hero - heroine, in this case - to be rewarded for saving the Princess." Luna's smile subtly shifted to something more intimate and her voice became a sweet whisper. "You've given this Princess a chance to do good again in this world. You've even looked past the limitations your culture has placed upon you to see me as more than a mere animal or affront to nature. You have a grand destiny about you, Twilight Sparkle, and it is far from over. If ever a pony was in need of a reward, it's you."

She blinked at Luna and lowered her own voice to a bare whisper. "You're a Princess?"

"Yes, Twilight." Luna pushed against her gently and pushed Twilight back until she dropped to her dock against the bed. " Once, long ago, I ruled as a Princess and protector of ponykind. A great threat rose and though the Draconequus was defeated, a trap was laid and we were encased inside the crystal where you found me. This world has suffered much in our absence and for that, I apologize."

Twilight gulped down air as Luna loomed over her. "Y-you don't have to apologize. It...it's us that should apologize. I've never met a non-unicorn before. At least ,not one that as pretty as you. I mean! Um...I…"

Luna smiled and placed her hoof softly against Twilight's lips. "I do not give you this reward merely because you deserve it. Ever since you saved me a second time, in the room with the other ponies that said I was something to be reviled, I must profess a growing attraction to you."

She shivered as Luna's breath and words tickled her ear pleasantly. She sighed and moved to let Luna do whatever she wanted. "It's mutual."

Luna took the advantage she was freely given and pushed Twilight onto her back and then cupped her chin with a hoof. Twilight looked up into those sparkling teal pools for a moment but she couldn't help herself any longer and lifted her head to press her lips to Luna's.

Luna gasped in response and...

* * *

"Stop. Please." Shining Armor rubbed between his eyes and levitated his paper cup of water to himself. "I said I wanted you to start at the beginning, Twily."

"You wanted to know what got me into this situation." Twilight huffed at the interruption. "I haven't even told you about the part where Short Circuit arrived with the salvaged data from the Thaumatronics lab and said some rather unfortunate things to me and Luna. I swear I didn't mean to break more than one of his legs."

"Yes and as interesting as it's been listening to you describe yourself getting frisky with a freak of nature, what I really want to know is where it came from!" Shining slammed his hoof into the table between them and left a shallow imprint. "Where did it come from, Twilight? How did all this start and how did you get caught up in it? You said it was found. Who found it? Where did they find it?"

Twilight stared at Shining in sullen silence for a moment and then sighed. "I was sent to find her, Shining, by the Solar Council themselves."

"What?"

"You heard me! They sent me there, out to those mines in the interior. They received a request from miners there for my presence. They found something encased in crystal under a mountain that hadn't seen the light of day in who knows how long! I was sent to find out what it was." Twilight turned her head away, her voice dropped to a near whisper. "I found her there."

Shining Armor frowned. The Council was keeping things from him again. With her confession he couldn't keep Twilight away from punishment, but perhaps there was still someway to lessen it. "Tell me about the mines, Twily."

* * *

The transport touched down on the tarmac with a squeal of rubber and a light bump that made the crew rock back and forth on their hooves. The singular passenger steadied herself against the pilot's cage and frowned at the rattling noises coming from the hold. The belly of the flying behemoth held her equipment from her lab and supplies for the miners and engineers that were already in the field.

One of the crew, a grey colored stallion, checked the instrument panel as they coasted down the runway toward what could laughably be called the tower. A low, wide building straddled the field next the runway with only a few lights on. Anywhere else on Equus and she would have thought the building to be closed or abandoned, but after heading into the Equestrian interior, such conditions seemed to be increasingly the norm.

It seemed the unstoppable march of progress only reached so far. Supply flights were her only option for coming this far from Neigh York and after this it would all be by ground transport through practically trackless terrain until she reached the mines.

The grey colored stallion grunted something as his horn lit up. She could feel the brakes kick in a second before their tortured scream reached her ears. The co-pilot, another stallion, grunted something incomprehensible and tapped at a few of the gauges with his hoof.

"Is something wrong?"

"No ma'am. Just making note of pressure levels. Looks like we're going to have to refill before we head out again. These long haul flights take it out of the pilot and I'd rather not have to try and find a replacement in this backwater if this one shits out on us." The co-pilot looked back over his shoulder at her and adjusted a knob on the pilot's cage with a touch of his telekinesis. "If you'll excuse my language ma'am."

There was a slight hiss from the pilot's cage as fluid rushed in and lights along the instrument panel clicked on and off. The transport slowed to a crawl as it bellied up to the unloading area. The co-pilot returned his attention to the front window and switched on the floodlights.

"Easy does it pal...we're almost in the cradle. Watch the starboard wing struts, I don't need to have repair fees coming out of my pay again." The co-pilot gently nudged the steering rudder to port when the entire five hundred ton transport jerked and threw crew and passenger alike into the wall and then the floor.

"Shit! The pilot's still awake! Fucker should be out after a dose of methoxy!"

"The pilot is rebounding!"

She grunted as the transport jerked again. Her equipment was going to get damaged at this rate and that was simply unacceptable. She triggered her horn and watched the mechanothaumatic instruments and pathways start to glow in her sight. The pilot's cage burned like a small sun with all its systems and biofeedback subroutines that led into the flesh of the pilot itself in the center.

She reached into that mess, past the electrical and medical systems and into the body itself, and found the thread that ran from the brainstem to the lungs. A little twist and the connection went dark. The transport's erratic motions halted almost instantly. She maintained her grip long enough to ensure the pilot was well and fully out, then she released it to let its natural breathing pattern resume.

She climbed to her hooves while the crew ponies picked themselves up. "Park this junk pile, unload my equipment and get that damn thing replaced! If anything is broken, I will have your jobs and your balls, is that understood?"

Both stallions gave her their full attention and nodded slowly. "Yes, ma'am."

Thankfully, the rest of the trip was uneventful. Her equipment survived well enough and the local techs got it all loaded onto the trucks without much fuss while she got caught up on her reading. She never read when flying, it didn't agree with her constitution. The accommodations were far from what she was accustomed to but they had lights and coffee and a few beaten up old chairs that still had a hint of cushioning to them in the airfield's tower receiving area.

The reports were bland and lacking in details but what they did reveal was intriguing. The miners had run into huge crystalline deposits when they had opened a new shaft just above the treeline on the large, central peak. Early geological surveys only gave it a number as a designation but the miners had started to call the mountain the Canterhorn.

The crystals were of special interest to her and the government. They seemed to contain a great amount of magic, which was normally only possible after heavy refinement. How these untouched, naturally-occurring crystals held so much energy was a complete mystery. That specific mystery, however wasn't what drew her out to this god-forsaken place. The miners kept digging. They kept dragging up more and more thaumically imbued crystal when it all suddenly came to a halt. The exact reason wasn't in the reports but the whispers that made it back to civilization said they found something.

She intended to find out what.

A tap on her shoulder by the driver shook her out of her thoughts. The gruff looking mare had remained silent as their small caravan had crawled through the forest and then up rough switchback trails barely wide enough for four stallions abreast. She had watched the sun set fully almost two hours ago. In the darkness of night the stone cliff walls disappeared only a few meters past the headlights.

"What?"

"We are almost to the gates, Doctor Sparkle." The mare nodded her chin forward as they completed yet another switchback and the dull metal of a chain link fence flashed in the darkness ahead. "The foreman's trailer is on the right."

She nodded and rolled her aching shoulders. The trucks trundled up the final few dozen meters and bright floodlights started to illuminate the base camp around the mouth of the mine. Several dingy, temporary trailers huddled in a small clump near the cliff side, leaving the large flat area open for the earth-moving equipment the miners used. Even before they stopped moving, she could see one bulky stallion standing at the door of one trailer, his foreman's hat clear in his backlit silhouette.

As soon as it was safe, her hooves hit the gravel and she marched over to the trailer. The stallion waiting there was one of the largest she'd met in recent months with a substantial ponch and more than a little muscle under it.

"You the doc they sent?"

She frowned when she heard him speak; he had the accent of low born ponies from the southern plains and pronounced his 'e's like 'ah's and emphasised the hard 't' sounds.

"I'll have the boys unpack your stuff and we take you down in the morning."

"No."

"Wha?"

"You heard me. Have your boys unpack, but I want to go into the mine now."

"It's late!"

"Did I stutter, foreman? What does it matter the time when we'll be underground? I am here at behest of the government and I plan to take up as little time and space as I can. I'm too wired to sleep anyway." She tilted her head and fixed the stallion with a glare. "The sooner I get a look at things, the sooner I get out of your way."

The foreman didn't flinch and returned her glare. "You damn Federals think you can order me around on my own operation? Don't think so, missy. We requested you here. That makes you a guest, but I ain't bending over backwards for you. I don't care how many times you've saved the country or what sorta genius other folk claim you to be. Now, did I stutter?"

She kept up her end of their little pissing contest. "Well, at least we have an understanding of where we both stand. Your house, your say goes. Up until I determine if this is something the government needs to pay attention too."

"Until then." The stallion huffed and let some of the tension in his shoulders drain. "I want you gone ASAP, so let's get you down there. Grab a hard hat and meet me at the shaft opening in two minutes."

A good deal more than two minutes and one hard hat later, she stood with the foreman and three other miners in a huge elevator that was slowly lowering them at an angle, deeper into the mines. The miners kept to themselves and she was glad for it. After that little stunt in the gravel yard it became painfully apparent that all of them were southern plains ponies. That was a hornet's nest she would need to be careful that she didn't kick. At least not accidentally.

The elevator's depth gauge read just over a thousand of vertical descent when it slowed to a stop. Given the apparent angle of the elevator shaft she figured the horizontal displacement to be about a quarter of that. The pressure on her eardrums was less than she was expecting and she swallowed several times as they descended. The temperature rose noticeably, but only by a hooful of degrees and was far from unpleasant.

Once the lift was secured, the foreman led the way, his horngrip flipping switches as they walked, and banks of spot lights illuminated the interior of the pony-made cavern. Sparkling strata of crystals ran through the stone like a layer of icing between layers of cake all the way from the main shaft lift and back into the dark recesses of the mine. Smaller tunnels branched off from the larger one they walked through and she could see excavation equipment sticking out around unsorted piles of stone and gems.

"It's right up here." The foreman turned on another back of lights and turned them toward one of the branching tunnels.

She wasn't a geology expert, or even well versed on mining, but she could tell this tunnel was not supposed to be here. The stone was ragged and looked more broken than excavated. Chunks as larger as her torso topped a rough jumble of rock that had been cleared from the entrance and she could easily see that the short tunnel opened into a larger, natural open space.

"What's in there?" She eyed the foreman, who returned the glare from earlier. "Has the chamber been tested for stability? This area looks like a collapsed wall, not the measured mining operation I've seen here so far."

"It was an accident that we found it at all. One of the loaders had overheated and stumbled into the wall there with its scoop arms moving at full torque. We're lucky no pony was hurt."

She looked over the haphazard scree and visualized one of the heavy-built and plated loaders careening into the wall. It wasn't hard to see how such destruction could have resulted from it. She frowned when she spotted a odd brown stain on several of the larger pieces. "I thought you said no pony was hurt."

"I did. Lost the loader though. Too bad about it too, it was a good breedmodel." The foreman pulled his hat off and wiped a hoof across his brow and turned his glare toward the hole in the wall. "We did a full scan of the opening. It's stable enough that we don't have to worry about the roof coming down anytime soon, but I'm having the boys clear the floor and widen this hole before we get in there and set up supports. It's not big really. 'Bout the size of a barn, maybe. You can see the crystalline formations from here though, so it's worth digging it all out.

The foreman nodded his horn at his fellow miners. "I sent in two of these boys here, when it opened up. They told me it was clear all the way across, but when they got to the far side, they found a huge crystal that had...whatever it is...in it. I called 'em back out and cleared the shaft to be safe."

She looked back and forth between the stallions, each of them far outsizing and outweighing her by almost half again. They all looked nervous and were either consciously or subconsciously leaning away from the ragged hole in the wall.

"Are you gentlemen telling me that you haven't moved or otherwise examined the find since you found it?"

"First time we been back since." One of the miners spoke up for the first time since they'd put on hard hats. "Whatever is in there ain't natural. I says it's demons. My buddy Veldt Fields says it's aliens."

"Really?" She smirked. "You're really telling me that you believe that superstitious hocum?"

"Hey! I believe! I read the Good Book every sabbath, so don't you go all superior on me, you Federal bitch!"

The smile left her face and she held up a hoof to calm the dirt covered hulk of a stallion. "I didn't mean to trample on your beliefs, sir. I'm a mare of science, so I take everything on a measurable value. While I might be a faithless, heartless Federal, I do work directly for the Solar Council and I witness miracles on a pretty frequent basis, so far be it for me to disparage those ponies that keep the faith."

The miners grumbled to themselves but they didn't look like they were going to lynch her on the spot, so she turned back to the hole and stepped up to the edge. The breach itself was only a single body length or so deep and the chamber beyond was dimly lit by the lighting behind her.

She lit her horn and cranked the illumination up as far as she could and drank in the details. The space was uneven, the surfaces rough but worn looking all the same, in the general shape of an egg. The floor dipped into a shallow pit and then tapered away until it met the downward curving ceiling. Crystal outcroppings punctured the space on all size, with some of them almost shoulder high and a brilliant white opalescence color. On the far side of the space a single large crystalline structure spanned from floor to ceiling. Even from across the chamber she could see a dark imperfection in the center of it. A vaguely pony-shaped imperfection.

She took her first steps into the space slowly, her attention fully on the ceiling of rock above her. "You're sure it's not going to collapse?" She looked back at the foreman. He and his miners stayed where they were and as far away from the opening as pride allowed.

"So long as you don't use any explosives in there. Probably."

She nodded and kept moving forward cautiously. It took her just a minute or so to cross the space to the huge crystalline structure. Up close it was a marvel to behold. It looked almost like a tree, with a thick central pillar that then branched out into small veins where it connected to the ceiling and floor. The surface was smooth and clear to a depth of about a single hoofspan before it became cloudy. From this distance she could easily see the tantalizing silhouette of not one, but two pony-like masses in the central pillar. They seemed, however, gigantically proportioned, particularly thick about the barrel, and if she wasn't seeing things, they had the largest horns she'd ever seen on a unicorn.

"Yeah…" she whispered to herself, "the government is going to want to be concerned with this."

She reached out with one hoof and gently touched the surface of the crystal. It felt warmer than the surrounding air and certainly warmer than the stone under her. The silhouettes seemed to be no more than a foot or so deep in the mineral and her mind was already whirling with plans to remove the crystal and reveal the contents. She was going to need her equipment. She was going to need to test everything she could about the composition of the rock and everything that might lead her to the answers she was already salivating for.

Unfortunately, she was going to need help.

She turned back toward the mine shaft and picked her way back to the opening between it and the crystal chamber. The foreman and his miners were still standing awkwardly where she had left them, all of them looking up when she poked her head out.

"I am sorry to inform you, gentlemen, but the government will be taking an interest in this find. Mining operations in this area are hereby called off until such time as I can remove the specimens from the site." Her statement was met with far less angry shouting then she'd feared. Bolstered by the lack of hostility, she pressed on. "I do not wish to take up valuable time. I understand how important the mined crystals here are to Equestria. I want to run some basic examinations tonight before I rest. However, tomorrow, I want this chamber's ceiling and walls reinforced and my equipment brought down. I'll send a message back to Neigh York and when back up from the Solar Council arrives, I will start the extraction process."

The foreman grunted. "I was expectin' something like this. Federals can't leave nothing alone once they get into it. I have other things that need my attention for the next lil' while, so I'm leaving things here to my underboss. He'll take care of whatever you need, ma'am."

He said 'ma'am' the same way a Neigh Yorker would say 'cunt' and his face told her all she needed to know about his true feelings on the whole affair. She kept her face neutral and nodded as if she'd missed it. The stocky stallion turned on his hoof and stamped back toward the lift with all but two of his miners in tow. She could hear them opening the elevator's cage moments later while she turned toward the two remaining stallions.

"I'm going back in to look around some more and take some measurements." The two miners paid her little more than slackjawed attention and she dropped trying to explain what she was trying to do. It would probably only start another insipid religious discussion. "I won't be long. Then we can all get some rest and then tomorrow we get to the real work."

The real work did start the next day. She had always been one for theories. As she waited for the miners to get over their beliefs and strengthen the walls of the specimen chamber and widen the entrance, she wrote her observations down in her trusty green notebook. It was noisy, sweaty work but she found herself engrossed in forming theories about the contents of the chamber. The formation of the crystal couldn't be natural. Was this the source of the thaumatically-rich material or was it only connected? Were the encased creatures - she hesitated to think of them as ponies - ancient unicorns? Were they some unknown offshoot of the common equine genome? Could the rumors of extraterrestrials or celestials be true?

She kept her questions and thoughts to herself. Her hastily penned missive to the Solar Council told them only the absolute basics of the find and outlined her needs to get the specimens back to a fully equipped lab as well as her labor requirements. They wrote back a similarly terse response that promised her whatever she needed and gave her a timeframe to expect her backup. In the days before that backup arrived she spent every waking moment in the chamber. She took exhaustive measurements of everything, her pen and green notebook her constant companions.

The next few weeks were a blur as her days were spent in the chamber and her nights spent writing furiously in her notebook by the wan light of her cotside lamp. Her only interruptions were letters that arrived almost every other day by special courier. She stayed in contact with her laboratory in Neigh York, commanding them from afar to be prepared to receive her and whatever she returned with. She pulled strings with the university system to get the machines she would need. She reviewed letters of introduction and resumes of the researchers she would need on her team.

Eventually, the time came and she lead a hoofpicked team of specialist triumphantly down the mine shaft elevator and into the opening she had come to think of as the home of her specimens. They brought a specialized excavator and walked it slowly around the trunk of crystal 'tree' to remove it from the surrounding stone. The work was the most intense form of tedious she could remember experiencing. Once it was free from its' moorings, the multi-ton mineral was gently lowered onto a loader and slowly removed from the chamber. The miners watched the scientists and grumbled loudly. Tensions at the mine rode high even as they neared completion of the extraction.

When the lift reached to top of the shaft, the crystal was again slowly walked out and into the open air under the sun for possibly the first time in eons. The loader was being guided by hoof toward the waiting trucks when she first got the feeling something wasn't right. There was a strange tingle in her horn, as if she were standing near a thaumatic transformer in a generator room. When she looked at the crystal, she could see it begin to glow with an internal light.

Her assistants took notice a moment later and the loader came to a full stop. Without the loud sounds of its hooves crushing the gravel in the yard, she could make out the noise of the crystal groaning under some sort of pressure. She stepped nearer to the loader out of morbid curiosity while every sense in her body screamed at her to move away. The other ponies around her heeded that instinct and backed away. She could feel heat coming off the crystal and as the glow intensified, so did the thermal discharge. The straps holding it to the loader bed started to smoke as the first cracks started to spiderweb along the crystal's surface.

"Everypony back! It's about to-!"

She didn't get to finish shouting her warning when it happened. One moment there was a large glowing crystal on the loader just a few strides away, and in the next moment there was chaos. Chaos and fire. It wasn't in the official reports of the incident that she would fill out later, but in that moment between order and chaos, there stood before her a pillar of light in pony form. It was an enormous unicorn with a statuesque build that nonetheless had the gentle lines of a mare. Its coat was white and its mane was a riotous halo of rainbow colors while its eyes were windows into the heart of the sun itself.

That thing, this mare made of light, looked at her as if it could see her soul in that instant. Those eyes of pure plasma winked at her and the barest hint of smile seemed to touch its lips but it could have been a trick of the light. Wings broad enough to fly a small plane spread from its sides and gave a single flap. Then the moment was over.

The next thing she knew, she was being lifted from the ground by a still smoking blue colored mare from the specialist team. The loader still stood but it looked like the charred center of a bomb blast. Shattered, partially-melted and steaming pieces of crystal littered the area. They no longer glowed and the heat was dissipating quickly. On the smoking loader bed, another smaller but still strikingly statuesque pony with a coat the color of the night sky lay amid the shards.

She thought the mare dead until she saw its chest move with glacial slowness. The loader bed near her was a wrecked testament to the power of the explosion that had just happened and yet the mare looked like she had simply fainted. Twilight moved closer, her eyes on the pony, when it shifted and rolled off the side of the loader. The dark colored pony hit the gravel like a bag of bricks and sprawled ungracefully at her hooves.

Twilight swallowed hard as she took in the sight. The mare - no, the creature - had the body of a Europonian runway model with long slender legs that lead the eyes to her sleek body, arching neck and gorgeous face with its incredibly long horn. Her - its - deep blue mane and tail were made of a haircare marketer's wet dream. She - it - would have made any mare jealous and any stallion mad with desire with its perfect form, except for one obvious feature.

She reached out with her hoof and gently touched the black-blue feathers. They were real. This thing was real. Around her she could hear the muttering and talking of the gathered scientists and researchers. She'd hoofpicked them all for their abilities in the lab and obvious intelligence. Perhaps she should have looked into their personal, religious backgrounds as well. Somepony was already reciting the Solar Prayer out loud.

She was not about to lose a viable specimen to the faith of others. She snapped her head up and pointed at a clump of scientists. "You! Pick up the shards! I want every piece of it larger than a pebble bagged and tagged and I want it done right! We are now on borrowed time here folks, so move! You, over there, get us a new loader from the miners. You three are with me, we're going to pick it up carefully! I don't want the specimen jostled any more than it has already been! And you two, keep the miners back! I have enough to deal with…"

* * *

Twilight's head hung down to her chest, her mane obscuring her eyes as she dropped off again from her tale. Shining Armor could tell she was crying without seeing the tears. His sister was known for her emotional detachment. A few ponies even wondered if she had emotions. A brother knew and so did an investigator. He'd seen more than his share of weeping mares in his time.

Twilight rattled her cuff against the metallic leg of the table. She kicked suddenly and hard but the bolted down furniture of the interrogation room had restrained worse and it refused to budge. Twilight tried again but her heart wasn't in it. When she spoke it was in a hoarse whisper. "Now what? I've told you everything you wanted to know."

Shining pushed the small paper cup of water closer to Twilight's side of the table. She took it with a shaking hoof. He frowned and sighed quietly, his own voice low. "I don't know, honestly. The Council...the Council will have to see to your final judgement. Crimes against pony kind are handled-"

She cut him off by throwing the cup at him and kicking against the table again. "IT WASN'T A CRIME!" Twilight fumed for a moment and then collapsed back into her chair. "You know what we did wasn't a crime, Shining. She...Luna...was just as much a pony as you or I. Maybe even more."

"Just thinking that is a crime, Twily, you know that."

"What I know is wrong! What we've been taught our entire lives is a sham and outright evil, Shining. Why can't you see that?" Twilight blinked the tears away that were already blurring her vision again. "Can you not even conceive of a world where things are not like this? Where...I don't know...we might have more friends and we'd be happy and could love whoever we wanted? A world where we didn't use ponies for powering our machines?"

"They aren't ponies, Twilight." Shining sat forward in his own chair and tapped on the tabletop in warning. He lowered his voice and tried to soften it. "Stop digging the hole deeper, you idiot! I have to report everything I hear from you, damnit. I don't want to have to tell the Council my own sister is not just blasphemous, but treasonous too!"

Twilight growled deep in her throat at the mention of the Solar Council. "Screw the Council, Shining. Screw them and the whole system! The ponies we use like interchangeable parts are our genetic family and I know you've seen the research. Use that brain I know you have and think for a minute."

Shining Armor frowned and leaned forward more to look his sister in the eye. He really looked, searched her face for any tell that would indicate she was lying or perhaps under some sort of manipulation magics. He knew what the scans earlier had told him but he needed to see for himself that Twilight was in full control of herself. For the first time in his life he wished Twilight was lying to him.

She wasn't.

"Twily...I'll talk to the Council. See if I can get them to go easy on you."

"What about Luna?" Twilight slumped in her chair again, her eyes downcast. "What's going to happen to her? Will you speak out on her behalf as well?"

"I don't know what will happen to Lu - to it. That is for the Council to decide. I'm sure they will take your research into consideration." Shining sighed and rubbed his tired eyes with one hoof. "Don't do or say anymore blasphemy or treason and perhaps you'll get off with a light sentence."

"That's bull." Twilight made a groaning noise. "They won't listen. They have their heads too far up their collective rears to hear anything but thier own shit. I'll be lucky to even see the outside world through a window again. And Luna, they will cut her apart and see how the pieces can be used."

"You don't know that."

"Don't I?" Twilight rattled her chains weakly. "I've been their loyal dog for my entire life, Shining. We both know how the Solar Council operates. We both know what it does to anything that might threaten them and their sick society. If they keep me alive, it will be under arrest and supervision for the rest of my 'life'. They will dissect Luna at best and just kill her and throw her body in the gutter like they've done to so many others at the worst."

Shining had no answer to his sister's suspicions and kept his mouth closed. He stared at her in silence for another minute before slowly pushing his chair back and standing up. He straightened his jacket and glanced over it. He flicked a small bit of lint away after a moment and spared Twilight a quick look before he walked toward the interrogation room door.

"If you can, Shining, let her see the moon one last time. It seems to make her happy."

Shining Armor froze at the door for a long moment before his horn flared and it started to open. "I can grant that request, at least, if it will ease your mind, Twily." With that he was gone and she was truly alone.

* * *

Dawn came to forrest hours earlier than normal. It was not supposed to come for a long time yet, she was sure. The animals around her stirred restlessly as light invaded their den. She spread her wings over them to calm them and keep them quiet. Noise would attract predators or worse, it would attract the monsters.

The light that flooded their hidden shelter was warm and gentle on her feathers though. It wasn't like the light the monsters used. Their light was harsh and a cool white. It meant death and danger and fear and running. This light was a warm and a welcoming yellow. It felt soothing and calming and it beckoned her out into the open.

Her animal friends seems to relax as the warm light poured in from outside the den and she rose gingerly to her hooves. She moved slowly, taking cautious, silent steps. She had spent years running and hiding from the monsters. She was ready to run and fly the moment she sensed danger. With each step she took, however, the more at peace and calm she felt.

When she reached the entrance to their den, she gently pulled the ivy that masked it away and peeked out from under her own pink mane and into the clearing. In the center of the clearing stood the Sun, her head haloed in the colors of a rainbow.

She paused there at the threshold of the den, her turquoise eyes locked on the creature that was the Sun. She knew she should be scared but she didn't feel it. The Sun looked like the monsters with its sharp, glowing horn.

Though she hesitated, one hoof raised and ready to bolt, she felt drawn forward as the Sun spread its great white wings over the glade. It looked like her. She rustled her feathers and swallowed hard before taking that first step into the clearing.

"Hello, shy one." The Sun's voice was even more soothing than her light. "I have come very far to see you and I apologize for my abrupt arrival, but I fear I must ask of you a very important favor."

She blinked up at the Sun and stepped out into the clearing fully. She wasn't sure how she understood the sounds the Sun made. She didn't know how she understood the sounds and moves of the animals that followed her everywhere she went. It was just the way things were. The same way she always helped whoever was in need.

"Don't worry, my little pony, words will come in time, as will understanding. For now you need know that we must seek out the other Exemplars of Harmony and-" The Sun paused, her eyes going wide for a moment before she turned and looked up into the sky at the Moon. "Ah, Sister, I'm pleased to see you have returned."

She inched towards the Sun in silence until she was close enough to touch the Sun's golden armor-clad hooves. The Sun towered over her but she felt safer than she could ever remember being in the presence of non-animals.

"Rest for now, dear Sister, and recharge. I have found the second of the Six. Soon we will go together and free the first from those ponies that would hold and harm her. Once we have all the Exemplars together we will bring harmony to this land and all its peoples as we were meant to long ago."


End file.
